Prozac plus rifle plus Iraq ended Spc. Travis Virgadamo's life

Army struggles with rising suicide
A soldier's tale illustrates the prevention battle inside the service as 2007 set a new high for troops taking their own lives

By Dahleen Glanton and Aamer Madhani Tribune correspondents
March 3, 2008

PAHRUMP, Nev. - All Spec. Travis Virgadamo ever wanted was to be a soldier.

But two years after his father signed papers for him to enlist at age 17, things went terribly wrong. Last August, three months after arriving in Iraq, he walked outside his barracks and killed himself with his rifle.

When the news crackled over the Bonecrusher Troop's radio, 1st Lt. Kyle Graham knew immediately that it was Virgadamo, the troubled soldier who had been on suicide watch since June, when he threatened to kill himself while on patrol.

"I feel like we all had some responsibility to make sure this didn't happen," Graham said shortly after the incident. "It's our responsibility to make sure we take care of our fellow soldiers."

Virgadamo, whose case has been cited on the Senate floor and in congressional hearings, is a symbol of a growing problem facing the military as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars face repeated and extended deployments.

Last year, 121 soldiers in the Army and active-duty National Guard and Reserves committed suicide, the largest number since the military began keeping records in 1980.

That is more than double the 52 suicides reported in 2001, the year the war in Afghanistan began, according to a recent Pentagon report. The report also cited 2,100 attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries last year -- six times the 350 reported in 2002, prior to the start of the Iraq war.

Efforts fail to stunt rise

The numbers are rising despite efforts by the military to beef up its mental-health programs. Faced with growing scrutiny over those programs in Congress and the news media, the Army has sought to improve services for soldiers, spending more than $1 million last year on additional counselors, training and screening, Army officials said.

"We are concerned," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's chief psychiatrist. "We are doing a lot already to assist in suicide prevention, but clearly we need to do more."

It is not uncommon to see an increase in suicides during war, said Coleen Boyle, an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and co-author of a mortality study on Vietnam veterans.

The current suicides, one-quarter of which occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, are due primarily to strained personal relationships exacerbated by repeated deployments that last up to 15 months, Ritchie said. That, coupled with the ready availability of firearms, often can become a deadly combination.

Ritchie said there is no indication that the stress of combat plays a major role in the suicides. But 19-year-old Virgadamo, his relatives said, was distressed over what he had seen in Iraq.

There were signs that he was having trouble long before he deployed. According to his grandmother, Katie O'Brien, Virgadamo had been sent to an anger-management program while in boot camp. She said he also was placed on suicide watch at the Army's Ft. Stewart in Georgia and prescribed the antidepressant Prozac shortly before he deployed. Last June, officials in Iraq placed him on suicide watch again.

Informed of Virgadamo's death, "I asked, 'How many others lost their life with him?'" said O'Brien, 65. "They stood there for a minute and took a deep breath and said, 'No others. It was self-inflicted.' I went ballistic, and I screamed, 'No, no no!'"
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Virgadamo was so depressed he needed Prozac but they sent him anyway. He lasted three months when he used the rifle he had been handed to end his own pain by taking his own life. What's wrong with sending them into combat on medication? Ask his family. Ask the families of all the others who were given medication and a rifle what's wrong with it. While Congress felt the need to make sure if anyone is diagnosed with mental illness they should not have a gun permit, they see nothing wrong with putting soldiers with mental illness into a combat zone.